Habitat Builds Humanity

The thing I love most about Habitat for Humanity is that it brings people together. Everyone taking a hammer, a paint brush, a rake or a nail to that house has helped to piece together a house that will eventually turn into a home for a very deserving family. The family will live their years in this home growing together feeling love and appreciation for all the people who contributed to build their habitat home in such a nice neighborhood. Not, only does Habitat for Humanity give the family a close bond to the many workers and volunteers on the house, but it also brings those groups of volunteers and workers together in ways only dangerous, manly activities can do. Yesterday I went on a day build with the board of my school paper. After a tour of all the problems that old house contained many of us braced the wobbly ladder and headed up to the roof which had a steep slant towards the cement driveway. One by one as we neared the top on the ladder we grabbed hands and secured the person from becoming flattened by the cement. As one of the workers said, "falling isn't bad. The bad part is hitting that hard stuff at the bottom." We didn't want anyone to hit the hard stuff. Our job as amateur roofers was to strip what we were standing on down the the support beams. Each layer was a new surprise; the shingles came off first, under that was a layer of rubber and installation of some sort and then after working together in the warm sun pulling up the nails, cutting the thick rubber with a small, fragile razor and using a pry bar to pull away the layers and throwing them down to the people on the ground trying, but not always succeeding, not to hit them with the flying pieces of shingles and rubber. Once the rubber was piled up in the backyard we could finally see the wood we thought our mission had been accomplished, but then we were told that the wood had to go too. After the wood was piled up in the backyard as well we had to climb over the support beams, trying not to look though the giant gaps at the floor of the first floor of the house, through the hole in the roof onto the ladder and to the ground to go sledge hammer the walls down. Braced with goggles and masks the Eastside board simultaneously took out their aggression on those poor defenseless walls of the house until all we could see was the wooden frame. At the end of the day we had successfully managed to devour the house with no more injuries than a few shingles to the back and some dust in our eyes. We all hopped back on the yellow school bus laughing about our attempts to be carpenters and thankful that no one fell off the roof.